‘Oh Craig, I’ve lost the baby,’ she said. He scooped her up into his arms, brought her inside and kicked the door shut behind them. He held her hot wet face against his neck while she shook soundlessly and held him tight. There was nothing to say, no comfort to be given except the most primitive human empathy and proximity. Only then, safe in his embrace, did she finally release the raw, ragged cry of loss, the escaping soul of their unborn child.

For hours they lay in darkness on the bed, for the most part not speaking, his hands busy stroking her hair and back, keeping her close. ‘It just happened, an hour before you got home,’ she sobbed. ‘I’ve been feeling fine, I had a good day at work. And then that blasted cat…’

‘What?’ he whispered. ‘I fixed the broken garage window.’

‘Yes, Craig, I kept telling you about it. Napoleon gets through the spare bedroom window from the garage roof.’

‘Couldn’t you have kept it shut until I have time to fix it? I thought that’s what we agreed.’

‘Don’t criticise me, not on top of this—’

‘Sam, darling, it’s not a criticism, I just thought we had agreed—’

‘But it’s so bloody stuffy in there. I had to have it open, I had to.’ She started crying again. ‘It was all on the floor by the bed, and I texted you about it, and I started clearing up—’

‘Sorry, what was on the floor?’

‘Sick, vomit, puke. It was sick, and there were all these bird feathers, and even little claws.’

Craig jerked as if he’d been given an electric shock. ‘I’ll strangle her, I’ll bloody strangle her.’

‘It’s male, Craig.’

‘Not the cat, it’s Trish. I’m not blaming the animal.’

‘And that’s when I started to feel this pain, awful pain, and had to rush to the bathroom.’

Craig returned to embracing her. Sam had already suffered a miscarriage, a year ago, a baby they had conceived when they were in Devon. And now this, a second time almost on the anniversary. And there was nothing to be done about it.

It was a subdued breakfast on Saturday morning when Craig Gillard got a text from Carl Hoskins. He looked up at Sam, who was trying to eat a little cereal now that her cramps had stopped. ‘Colin Hodges was taken in to hospital overnight with kidney problems,’ he told her. ‘He’s apparently in intensive care.’

‘Poor thing. Is that the one with the horrid ginger beard?’

‘Yes, marginally the uglier of the two. He is quite overweight and a notorious salad dodger. Still, I’ll drop by and see him later on. I’ll take him a bunch of celery, that should cheer him up.’

‘Cheer you up more likely,’ she said, then looks down. ‘Craig, I really want to move house as soon as possible. I feel her malevolent presence all the time.’

‘Well, the advert is on Rightmove and we’ve had seven or eight viewings, there’s not much more we can do.’